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Goodbye 2023!

Announcement

NO DOUBT 2023 was a tough year for everyone except a handful of tech billionaires who gathered enormous wealth–

— but we got through it, which is what counts. In so doing, at New Pop Lit we published a variety of sterling work, fiction and poetry both. In our admittedly biased opinion, some of the best writing to be found anywhere. Doubt this? Then click onto our “TOP OF THE POP” page and browse around. READ some of the stories and poems. They fit our goal of being readable and striking.

WHAT ELSE were we up to in 2023? For one, our “Save the Writer!” petition, which has us standing at the forefront among literary people in questioning the dubious benefits of Artificial Intelligence. If you have not yet signed the petition– you should.

WE ALSO began a new page at our site, Fast Pop Lit— a site within a site, really– for posting shorter work much faster than we can put up our longer features. Also, as a way to promote those writers we do feature at our main site. Plus, it’s as striking looking as any literary site out there– a reflection of our intention to be not just one more literary mag. Previews, interviews, commentary, satires– with much more to come. Check it out!

Then stay tuned for a lot more to come in 2024.

More Fall Fiction!

Pop Lit Fiction

WE’RE in a race to pick up our game to be the best literary project on the planet, to point a direction out of the doldrums for literature and restore it to its rightful place as leading force in the culture. NOT marginalized, not an afterthought, not a forum for niche thinking and satisfied-with-obscurity players, of whom today in the overground and underground there are far too many.

How do we find a path out? It begins with relatable, real, relevant writing. Like our new feature story: “And the Angels Sing” by Joe Del Castillo. A tale about a dying music fan and five young subway singers.

The question is: Does the literary art belong only in airless halls of shuffling professors in Ivy-covered universities who clutch selfishly to the treasured object and won’t let it out of their grasp for public enjoyment– OR in locked rooms inside thick-walled insane asylums where doomed individuals scream solipsistic obscenities under the guise of self-expressive “alternative” or “outsider”? (Way outside.)

The answer is: NO! We can do better as a culture and art form and we will do better if we reach readers with emotion and meaning.

As, for instance, Joe Del Castillo does in our brand-new feature. We hope you enjoy it.

The Go-To Spot

Announcement

GO!

That’s what we’re aiming for, rather ambitiously, with our Fast Pop Lit site (also linked on our menu). The idea being to quickly post new work on an instantaneous basis (almost)– to create a colorful kaleidoscope of criticism, commentary, quirkiness, satire, sneak previews, short fiction, poems, and gossip. Sometimes off-the-wall, and other times completely serious. Or utterly ridiculous.

THIS MOMENT

Our newest post at Fast Pop is a poem, “Moment (October)” by James Croal Jackson, who appeared in one of our unique print zeens, ZEENITH. (Still available at our POP SHOP.)

NEXT UP

We have coming Thursday a quick interview with Aspen Audley, who penned our current feature, “White Crane Spreads Its Wings.” After that, a Sneak Preview of our next feature; short interviews with other writers; more James Croal Jackson poetry; and a short essay about the “Worst Literary Critic Ever” (not to miss); and much more!

We aim to be all things and everything books, writing, and literature related.

Fiction Finale 2022

Pop Lit Fiction

THIS HAS BEEN an excellent year for us in terms of fiction, maybe our best. The goal for 2023 will be to top it.

This year we close with an amazing story from Nick Gallup, who consistently has given us amazing work, in part from a clear writing style and in part from a knowledge of people, combined with a sense of structure– setting up on the front end what will happen on the back end. As he does with “The Stenographer,” which is about history but also about today. Very much about today. Presented in an understated yet dramatic way.

For anyone who loves the short story and enjoys reading.

Mom told me that one of the things she regretted about her college years was she hadn’t taken stenography and typing before enrolling. Stenography, she explained, would’ve been an asset for taking notes during lectures. Typing, in turn, would have been a boon for preparing term-papers, as it was her experience that typed term papers received higher grades than those written even in the best cursive. Made sense to me, so I let her talk me into taking a secretarial course at night while I worked during the day.

XXXX

ALSO: Watch for our FUN POP POETRY Special Edition, soon available at our POP SHOP.

Book Chat!

book review

HELLO! We’ve revived our book review/book chat blog to feature a brilliant review by Ross Taylor, of an amazing new book by avant-garde musician Robyn Hitchcock.

Ever since John Lennon mentioned marmalade skies (or since Robert Johnson said a woman is like a dresser) songwriters have embraced modernist jive. Robyn Hitchcock hasn’t chased the spotlight as much as some, but he has been a serious and hilarious practitioner of said jive since before punks walked the earth. His lyrics have always had the violent density of poets. . . .

(We’re also looking for other top-notch short reviews or very short essays. Contact us at newpoplitDOTgmailDOTcom if you have an idea for one.)

XXX

p.s. Also check out the latest post at our News blog– “Where’s the Literary Underground?”

(Painting: “Woman Reading” by Henri Matisse.

Summer Love: Poetry by Holly Day

Poetry

ANOTHER TALENTED ZEENITH WRITER

Holly Day is one of the poets featured in ZEENITH (available here).

How talented a poet is she?

We now have three other poems of hers readily available to read at our site: “Summer Love and Other Poems.”

They show a wide variety of themes. Each of them give a piece of a picture of the crazy sad beautiful world we live in now, and so their overall effect, one might say, is three-dimensional. Worth reading, if you love summer, love life, love words:

I hear radio reports reporting, television shows broadcasting
school janitors with secret torture chambers
and I wonder how they can ask me

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(Art: “Composition V” by Wassily Kandinsky.)

Novel Excerpt from Brian Eckert

Pop Lit Fiction

BEST NEW WRITERS DEPARTMENT

ONE of the premises of the New Pop Lit project is that a pool of overlooked talent exists in this world, this society. Overlooked for a variety of reasons– lack of connections, or correctness, or proper credentials. Or simply because of an unwillingness to conform to dictates of the institutional mob, whether those dictates be ideological or aesthetic.

OUR mission is to showcase such writers. One of the best of them without question is Brian Eckert. To come to that conclusion all one need do is read his writing– consistently of high quality. As with this excerpt from his short novel, Into the Vortex. A story about a journalist investigating the West who discovers a canyon seemingly beyond time and space.

In spite of my skepticism I began seeing signs of architecture on the rock. I made out an ornate window framed in metallic blue with a holographic patina. I also saw a hieroglyphic-like depiction of what appeared to be a flying saucer. But as I looked closer I saw only rock.

eye of horus

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(Main painting: watercolor copy by Nina Degaris Davies of an Egyptian wall painting )

Tornadoes and Other Fronts

Feature, Poetry

A POP LIT POTPOURRI 

We’re out to create literary tornadoes. Toward that end we point the reader to three new-or-recent posts at this project.

FIRST we have a new feature, “Tornado Country” by poet John Grey. Two very good poems for your reading pleasure.

and cars, long and proud and American made

explode like firecrackers in the heat of day,

and some small town like Millville is razed like it’s Babylon,

SECOND, we did a short “Pop Quiz” Q & A with the author of our previous feature, Transhumanist Presidential candidate Rachel Haywire. 

THIRD, a return of our NPL News blog with a quick look at Lana DelRey and a possible? connection to future literary stars, “Reverse Jekyll and Hyde.”

Must reading to stay current with the Pop Lit literary scene.
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(Art: “Tornado Over Kansas” by John Steuart Curry.)

More New Poetry

Poetry

OUR MARCH focus on poetry continues with a selection of striking verse, “Poetry by Warmoth” from rising literary star Kai Warmoth.

NOTE what Warmoth does with images and ideas in these four poems. You won’t see anything quite like it– Kai Warmoth is one of a number of young poets who’ve rejected mere unstructured narcissistic meanderings of a kind seen from scores or hundreds or thousands of follow-the-crowd literary journals and sites, for something deeper, more meaningful. Something unique. Poetry a tad more complex and deep than Instagram scribblings. All four of Warmoth’s poems bear re-reading. In fact, they demand it.

Try as I do to attend to Spring Snow
It doesn’t arrest like her eyes
Carved with rouge and streaked with coal.
And elbows crook’t atop the melanoid throw
Push your face to the skyward glow.

****

THE 3–D STORY

electric prism sonia delaunay

MEANWHILE, headway on the three-dimensional short story continues. This will be the biggest leap in the art since Hemingway. The concept’s been developed. The work now comes down to perfecting it via prototypes. Which means much trial and error. Which means throwing out standard writer selfishness to focus instead on what works, from the standpoint of readers.

Stay informed on our progress at our New Pop Lit News blog.
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(Art: “Composition with Figures” by Lyubov Popova; “Electric Prism” by Sonia Delaunay.)